


Show Me My Silver Lining, I Try to Keep On Keeping On

by iliveinfantasies



Series: All the Messy Parts, Every Part [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, AvaLance, Coming Out, F/F, Gen, High School AU, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 01:30:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16419851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iliveinfantasies/pseuds/iliveinfantasies
Summary: “Okay,” Sara growled through gritted teeth. “Since this is apparently how we do things now, you owe me a fucking explanation. I know you’ve never liked me, and even though I’ve never actually done anything to you, I let that go. But what the actual fuck was that shit earlier? I ruined everything? If I don’t know, there’s no point? God, just tell me what your problem is.”Ava stood, speechless and raw, trying with everything she had to call up that anger, that fire, that rage. But she had used it all up, burned through the fast-catching kindling, and all that was left was a very real, thrumming fear radiating deep into her bones.-----Or, the aftermath of what happened at pride, and the rocky beginning of this LoT High School AU!





	Show Me My Silver Lining, I Try to Keep On Keeping On

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! This is new territory for me. I usually write canon angst, and rarely proper, plot-driven chapter fics. Recently, I've branched out in the form of a coffee shop AU, and now, this. This is the beginning of a HS AU for legends of tomorrow. Hope y'all are ready for this wild ride, because it's going to be one!
> 
> Also, PLEASE let me know if this is a story you’re enjoying the direction of, it are interested in, or just. Anything. I like feedback, so please?
> 
> If you haven't checked out the prologue to this work, it's right here:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/15924815
> 
> You don't have to, but I highly recommend it, so that it makes more sense. Otherwise, you can just ask me, up to you. 
> 
> Also, special, special thanks to my beta and, honestly, sometimes co-writer, Lysippe, without whom this chapter would definitely not exist. She's the best. And awesome at dialogue. Go read her stuff!
> 
> Please, come talk to me about Avalance on Tumblr at iliveinfantasylife!

It started with a photo.

A single, solitary Instagram photo, snapped by someone who, undoubtedly, was surprised to see The Ava Sharpe participating in something other than schoolwork, or track, let alone Ava Sharpe  _ where she was  _ with  _ who she was with _ . But then, people started to  _ see _ it. Regram it. Screenshot it and share it to their own stories with “wtf is even happening??” and surprised-face emojis slapped over the top. Then, people started to speculate. About Ava. About who she was and what she was and what she might be to Sara Lance. And suddenly, a lifetime’s worth of effort at flying under everybody’s social radars came crumbling down at her feet.

It had taken some time. Ava didn’t actually know, right away. It was only posted because, presumably, some person from Star City High School had included it in a random Pride photo dump a couple of months after the actual event; someone not even close enough to Ava to tag her in it. But then one day, three days into the start of their junior year of high school, Ava came home from track practice, disheveled and covered in a light layer of sweat, to see her sister in the kitchen, sipping at a glass of iced tea and scrolling through her phone at the kitchen island. As Ava stepped into the room, her sister glanced over and smiled widely. Ava stopped, heart immediately dropping into her stomach. Because Ava and her sister were anything but close, and she knew that when Katharine “Kitty” Sharpe looked at her that way, it meant trouble.

“Aaaava,” Kitty drawled, her voice overly-sweet, syrupy and dripping with intent.

“Kitty,” responded Ava, quietly, adjusting her stance and gripping the strap of her shoulder bag tightly. She moved to push past Kitty, but stopped when Kitty turned in her chair to face Ava fully.

Ava let out an exasperated sigh. “ _ What? _ ” she asked, just a little too forcefully, trying to swallow the rising worry in her chest. It could be nothing. It might be nothing.

Kitty continued to smile widely, looking back down at her phone. “I didn’t know you and Sara Lance were so close.”

Ava’s face twisted in confusion, impatience and annoyance overtaking the concern. “Uh. We’re not?  _ What _ are you talking about?” Kitty said nothing, but held up her phone to Ava, who pressed closer to look at the screen. Her heart stopped. Her stomach rolled. She felt the panic rise, fully now, cresting in waves throughout her chest.

There, illuminated on the screen, was Ava herself. Ava, in that stupid, godawful rainbow bandana. Ava, with Sara Lance standing in front of her, Ava’s bandana between her fingers, gazing up at her as though she hung the moon.

Ava had never seen a more damning lie of a picture in her entire life.

Ava cut her eyes back to Kitty’s clear gaze. She still had that horrible grin on her face. “Kitty,” Ava began, low and quiet in a voice she’d never heard from herself before. Then she stopped, let out a long breath. “Have mom and dad seen it?”

Kitty laughed, a little coldly, and scoffed. “ _ Please _ . You think mom and dad have Instagram? You think mom and dad have any semblance of an idea of what Instagram even is? No.” She studied Ava’s face. Ava attempted to keep it as neutral as possible.

“And they don’t have to,” Kitty said, with an air of false nonchalance. “To be honest, I genuinely don’t care what you do with your time,” she added, carefully placing her phone back down on the table, before raising her head to look Ava dead in the eyes. “Just remember,” she said, that fake grin still pasted in place, “that I now have this.” Then she spun back around in her chair, and turned her attention toward her papers once more.

Ava felt completely frozen, as though a chill had swept through her bones, forming frost along her lungs. She and Kitty has never ever gotten along. They’d always been rivals, at best—where Ava was quiet, and kept to herself, channeling all of her energies on school, Kitty was charismatic with a capital c. Everyone she encountered loved her. She kept good grades (not  _ top  _ grades, but good ones), played the clarinet, was the president of the Young Republicans club at school. For someone who had Ava’s exact face, they were entirely different in almost ways, and had never really liked each other. But surely, surely Kitty wouldn’t be cruel enough to spill Ava’s biggest secret to their parents.

One look at Kitty’s carefully composed expression told Ava that she was dead wrong.

* * *

Ava knew, in the back of her mind, that she was being completely unreasonable. She knew it wasn’t Sara’s fault that the entire school including Kitty now had, if not proof, at least an inkling in their mind about Ava’s sexuality. But despite knowing this, the moment she saw Sara standing at her locker in the nearly-empty hallway at the end of third bell, the reasonable, logical, rational part of her brain--the part she clung to as much as possible--evaporated, and was replaced with a raging pit of anxiety and embarrassment and fear.

She stormed up to Sara, stopping just next to her locker, hands on her hips. Sara glanced over at her, not stopping her rummaging. Sara’s face furrowed in confusion, just very slightly, before she smoothed it out.  

“Ava,’ she said, quietly, pulling a soccer jersey out of one of her bags and draping it over her arm. Her voice was quiet, and slightly questioning, a hundred confused thoughts fit into one word. Which, really, Ava couldn’t blame her for. Because when had they talked, really? When since that day? The tone of Sara’s voice lended Ava pause for just a second, until she glimpsed the shiny surface of a rainbow magnet on the inside of Sara’s locker door, and the spark of her rage and anxiety buried in her stomach flared up again into a full flame. She fixed her face into a glare.

“What did you do?” she hissed. 

Sara stopped, clearly taken aback. She turned away from her locker, it still swung open on its hinges, to blink at Ava. She crossed her arms, and raised an eyebrow.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she said, measured, even, calm. It made Ava’s anger smolder, simmer, rising to a place just below her skin.

“God,” Ava said, digging her nails into her sides. “Are you  _ kidding _ me right now?”

Sara narrowed her eyes. “I very clearly am  _ not  _ kidding. I’m confused, and every bit as pissed off as I look, so if you would just please enlighten me with exactly what I supposedly did, that would be great.”

“You ruined everything, is what you did.” The words were flying out of Ava’s mouth before she could even think about the unfairness of them.

“Okay, I’ve spoken to you exactly once since June, and it was to ask you to hand me a paper towel in the girl’s bathroom. How exactly could I have--” Sara lifted up her fingers to make air quotes “--’ruined everything?’”

Ava scoffed. “If you seriously don’t know, then there’s no point.” She turned on her heel before all of the fire hissed out of her, and stalked away down the hall, leaving a gaping Sara Lance staring after her.

* * *

 

Ava pulled the last book from her locker, letting the door swing shut with a lour, satisfying slam. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed. She’d made it, somehow, through the rest of the school day. Sara had pointedly ignored her throughout AP US History, and AP Literature, and that was just fine with Ava. She hadn’t known what she would have said, now, anyway, now that the anger had died into ashes and all that was left was a whispy sort of smoke clouding her mind. She opened her eyes, again, turning to leave when Sara cornered her, scowling deeply as she positioned herself very intentionally in Ava’s direct pathway to the door. Her hair was thrown up into a halfhearted ponytail, her eyes just a little wild as she looked at Ava. Ava froze, stalk still.

“Okay,” Sara growled through gritted teeth. “Since this is apparently how we do things now, you owe me a fucking explanation. I know you’ve never liked me, and even though I’ve never actually  _ done _ anything to you, I let that go. But what the  _ actual fuck _ was that shit earlier? I ruined everything? If I don’t know, there’s no point? God, just  _ tell me  _ what your problem is.”

Ava stood, speechless and raw, trying with everything she had to call up that anger, that fire, that rage. But she had used it all up, burned through the fast-catching kindling, and all that was left was a very real, thrumming fear radiating deep into her bones. 

But Ava was, despite her little mishap earlier, nothing if not good at pretending. After all, she thought bitterly, she had spent the last sixteen years doing exactly that.

So she straightened herself up, and fixed Sara with a practiced expression of withering condensation. She said, slowly, as if speaking to a particularly stupid child, “The  _ picture,  _ Sara _.” _

Sara huffed, loudly, cheeks growing slightly red with impatience. “ _ What  _ fucking picture, Ava? That’s pretty much the least helpful thing you’ve ever said.”

Ava felt the irritation flare, again, just slightly. “God,” she said, reaching into her back pocket for her phone. “How can you be so fucking out of the loop?”

Sara barked out a laugh. “Well that’s rich, coming from you, but go on.”

The jab hit Ava harder than she had anticipated, and she felt her chest constrict, for just a moment. She shook it off, scrolling quickly, jerkily through her Instagram feed until she found the picture.  _ That  _ picture. 

Seeing it again filled her with a whole fresh wave of anxiety, and resentment, and—though she hated it more than any of the other feelings—fear. She shoved it down and thrust her phone into Sara’s face. “Here,” she pressed out through gritted teeth.

Sara took the phone from Ava, studying it for a moment. Through Sara’s expression remained angry, her eyes clicked through a vast reel of emotions, flicking from confusion to thoughtfulness to dawning realization like an old projector, finally settling on some odd combination of understanding and pity. Ava wanted to slap the look right out of her eyes. 

“Oh,” Sara breathed out, looking up at Ava as she handed back the phone. “Ava--” she began, voice quiet, too quiet, now, but Ava cut her off.

“ _ No, _ ” Ava hissed, sharply. 

Because of course  _ Sara Lance  _ wouldn’t get it. Sara Lance, who had hundreds of pictures with hundreds of girls, probably hundreds of whom she had kissed and touched and fucked. Sara Lance, who had been Out And Proud since freshman year. Sara Lance, whose eyes were wide and vast and blue and bright and glittering, even through anger, and not at all afraid.

Ava sucked in a sharp intake of breath. “Don’t you get it?” she said, voice cracking a little on her words. “I’m completely screwed.”

She hitched her bag up on her shoulder, pushing past Sara, and made her way quickly toward the door.


End file.
